Court TV verdict in

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When Court TV began 10 years ago, its logo displayed "COURT" in the sort of no-nonsense lettering you might find carved above the columns of a courthouse.

Maria Zone, a Court TV producer (shown here at the network's New York office), was held hostage for several hours last fall by a convicted killer during a prison interview. Associated Press

The difference illustrates the evolution of this cable network, which has supplemented sober jurisprudence with true- crime shows, scripted cops-and-robbers drama, even an ill-fated stab at courtroom humor from a talk-show host named Lionel. And it may widen its focus even further.

In this tale of two logos is also found the trials Court TV has endured just staying alive since signing on with its original lofty, long-shot mission and a scant 6 million subscribers on July 1, 1991.

Now, holding its new slogan aloft — "Judgment days. Sleepless nights" — the channel has revived and remade itself into a hit. In June, Nielsen rated Court TV the fastest-growing cable network in the country, with subscribers up 40 percent over the previous year. The number hovers near 65 million. On July 8, Court TV achieved its best evening rating when 742,000 households watched its Sunday prime-time shows.

Those aren't Super Bowl numbers by any means, but demographics are everything and Court TV boasts the sixth-highest concentration of viewers ages 25-54 of the 40 cable networks monitored by Nielsen. Advertising revenues last year rose to $50 million.

The network's Web site has established itself as a legal research portal, with links to crimelibrary.com and thesmokinggun.com — sites it acquired in January.

Victims groups oppose Court TV's marketing, at its online store, of a beach towel bearing its logo and the crime-scene trademark chalk outline of a corpse advertising its reruns of "Homicide: Life on the Streets." Court TV didn't throw in the towel — it's still on the market for $24.95.

"The network was informationally driven to begin with, which I think was a real good place to start," says Henry Schleiff, the network's chief executive officer. "What we've done is to take that foundation and add a complement: entertainment. ... What we have to do is make sure we continue to walk the tightrope and make it clear when we do things for information, and when we do things for entertainment."

It's a far cry from the beginning, when the foundation as laid by network founder Steven Brill was as simple as it was radical: gavel-to-gavel courtroom proceedings, much of it live. It was C-SPAN for legal junkies. For a while, the audience's verdict seemed to favor the experiment.

"What we didn't fully appreciate when we started Court TV was, about nine out of 10 Americans had never seen a trial," recalls chief anchorman Fred Graham, the granddaddy of TV legal correspondents and Court TV's first employee.

"People would watch pretty tedious stuff," Graham says, "because they were seeing a process that was so different from what they had thought trials were like."

Stamford, Conn., lawyer Mickey Sherman, who brainstormed with Court TV producers before the first broadcast, and whose defense of a Vietnam veteran based on post-traumatic stress disorder was one of the network's pilot programs, was among the early skeptics.

"I left thinking, 'No one's going to watch this stuff,'" Sherman said. "To me, it was too much like going to work. I couldn't believe the public would just want to sit in the courtroom and watch cases."

The O.J. Simpson case saturated viewers with trial coverage. This Court TV view shows relatives of victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman hearing the not-guilty verdict in October 1995. At bottom left, Goldman’s sister weeps on her father’s shoulder. Associated Press

"But we began to get the feeling that what we were doing was so fascinating to the American people that we could put a camera in any courtroom, and people were gonna watch," Graham said.

Then 1995 delivered O.J. Simpson's criminal trial.

Unfortunately, after the monthslong O.J. binge by Court TV (as well as poachers including the three major networks and CNN as well as ESPN 2 and E! Entertainment), the novelty of televised trials was over. Worse, viewers felt gorged.

"They were past the gee-whiz stage," Graham says with some understatement. "We went through some rocky times after that."

Seemingly, Court TV's sense of high purpose needed reappraisal. What would be the new face of Court TV? It would be all things law-and-order, Schleiff decided.

"What we said was, 'The natural manifest destiny of a network like this is to take advantage of people's interest in crime and justice,' " explains Schleiff.

Live trial coverage remains the mainstay of daytime programming.

Otherwise, Court TV has ventured even beyond legal analysis like "Catherine Crier Live," to early-evening and prime-time fare that includes true-crime magazines like "Forensic Files" and "Mugshots," reruns of reality shows like "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted," and dramas like "Homicide" and "Profiler."

"Crime and justice is such a rich and interesting area, so full of emotion, so full of heroes," says Schleiff, whose production credits include various programs for cable networks like Lifetime, USA, the Family Channel and Showtime.

Come September, look for "NYPD Blue" reruns to join the lineup. Also on the docket: original TV films with crime-and-justice themes.

This is quite a different corpus juris from the days of Brill, gone four years, who vowed at the network's founding that its goal was "to substitute real law for 'L.A. Law."'

Schleiff contends that information and entertainment both fit on Court TV. "Given the breadth of the genre that we cover," he says, "either one by itself wouldn't do justice to the subject matter — no pun intended."

He has his sights set on gaining access to federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently ban cameras. "I think the opportunity we have with federal trials is huge," he said.

As for prime time, Court TV has committed to spending $140 million for original programming over the next two years, including series, movies, and docudramas such as "Ghosts of Attica," which is planned for broadcast in September — the 30th anniversary of the deadly Attica prison riot. And the network acquired the rights to rebroadcast "NYPD Blue" beginning in September. "The Secret History of Rock and Roll," hosted by Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons, which explores how the rock scene and crime intertwine, is in the programming lineup.

Schleiff won't categorically dismiss any programming idea, even after the flop of Lionel's "Snap Judgment" and the uproar over last fall's "Confessions," where lawbreakers were put on view confessing their crimes. Schleiff scrapped it after two airings.

"It wasn't merely a learning experience," he says of the latter misstep, "but also reflective of a legitimate mistake a network makes when it's trying to grow as fast as we are."

• On the Web: courttv.com